The present disclosures generally relate to network devices and systems, and more specifically, improving efficiency and robustness for configuring data-planes.
Traditionally, network devices may have a control-plane and a finite number of data-planes all with in the same physical network device. In certain instances, the data-planes are capable of forwarding the packets arriving on an inbound interface. For example, the data-plane may look up the destination address of the incoming packet and retrieve the information necessary to determine the path from the receiving element through the fabric for the network device. In such a hardware configuration, the configuration information associated with each data-plane is readily known by the controller associated with the control-plane or can be ascertained by the controller. In the event that a data-plane needs to be rebooted and reconfigured, the whole system is rebooted and reconfigured as part of bringing the system back up.
In more recent network devices and systems, the static relationship between the control-plane and the data-plane may no longer exist. For example, in a distributed network system, the relationship between the control-plane and the data-plane may be more dynamic. For instance, the number of data-planes associated with a distributed network system may change over time. Furthermore, the data-planes may be dispersed both logically and physically, in some instances. Therefore, the static techniques of maintaining and updating data-planes as performed in traditional network devices may not be adequate.